n.o.body cared but me, it seemed.
We sold the horses. They didn"t bring enough. They was pretty ragged after the beating they took coming south. Raven had a bad hangover and wasn"t in no mood to argue. But I was getting brave in my old age.
I asked him, "What"s the point in us chasing Croaker halfway across the world? Especially when the last time you ran into him he put an arrow into you? Say we do catch him. If he don"t finish the job, if he even listens, what"s he going to do about whatever happened up north?"
I got to admit I was plenty skeptical about what he claimed maybe happened up there. Even if he did study a little black sorcery way back when.
I guess you could call it nagging. I said, "I figure you got a lot more important business right here in Opal."
He gave me an ugly look. "I don"t much care what you think about that, Case. Mind your own business."
"It is my business. It"s me getting dragged halfway across the world and maybe ending up getting killed someplace I never heard of because you got problems inside your head."
"You aren"t a slave, Case. There"s no one holding a knife to your throat."
I couldn"t say I owe you, man, but you wouldn"t understand nothing about that. You taught me to read and write and believe I had a little value as human being before you went off the end. So I said, "If I drop out, who"s going to clean you up when you puke all over yourself? Who"s going to drag you out after you start a fight in some tavern and get your a.s.s stomped?"
He"d done that last night and if I hadn"t showed up when I did he maybe would"ve gotten himself killed.
This guy who was riding off to save the world.
He was in a rotten mood. His head ached with the hangover. His hip hurt. His body ached from the beating. But he could not find a way to answer me even in that humor. He just said, "I"m going to do what I"m going to do, Case, right or wrong. I"d like to have you along. If you can"t make it, no hard feelings."
"What the h.e.l.l else I got to do with my life? I got nothing to tie me down."
"Then why do you keep b.i.t.c.hing?"
"Sometimes I like to have what I"m doing make some kind of sense."
We got on the boat, which was a grain ship crossing over in ballast to collect a cargo, and we were off to a part of the world even Raven hadn"t seen before. And before we got to the other side we was both d.a.m.ned sure we shouldn"t have done it. But we did decide not to try walking back to Opal when the ship"s master refused to turn her around.
Actually, the trip didn"t start out all that bad. But then they had to go untie the mooring ropes.
A storm caught us halfway over. It wasn"t supposed to blow at that time of year. "It never storms this season," the bosun promised us right after the wind split a sail the topmen didn"t reef in time. For four more days it kept on not storming at that time of year. So we were four more days behind when we hit the dock in Beryl.
I didn"t look back. Whatever I"d thought about Raven and his kids and obligations before, that wasn"t interesting now. They were on the other side of the big water and I was cured of wanting to be a sailor. If Raven suddenly decided he had to go back and balance accounts I was going to tell him to go pick his nose with his elbow.
The bunch we were chasing had left a plain trail. Raven"s buddy had gone through Beryl like thunder and lightning, pretending to be an imperial legate on a mystery mission.
"Croaker is in a big hurry now," Raven said. "It"s going to be a long chase."
I gave him a look but I didn"t say it.
We bought new horses and rounded up travel stuff. When we headed out what they called the Rubbish Gate we were seven days behind. Raven took off like he was going to catch up by tomorrow morning.
XVI.
In the heart of the continent, far to the east of the Barrowland, Oar, the Tower, and Opal, beyond Lords and even that jagged desolation called the Windy Country, lies that vast, inhospitable, infertile, bizarre land called the Plain of Fear. There is sound reason for the name. It is a land terrible to men. Seldom are they welcomed there.
In the heart of the Plain of Fear there is a barren circle. At the circle"s center stands a gnarly tree half as old as time. The tree is the sire of the sapling standing sentinel over the Barrowland.
The few scabrous, primitive nomads who live upon the Plain of Fear call it Old Father Tree and worship it as a G.o.d. And G.o.d that tree is, or as close as makes no difference. But it is a G.o.d whose powers are strictly circ.u.mscribed.
Old Father Tree was all a-rattle. Had he been human, he would have been in a screaming rage. After a long, long delay his son had communicated details of his lapse in the matter of the digging monster and the buried head and the wicker man"s insane murder spree.
The tree"s anger was not entirely inspired by the tardiness of his son. As much was directed at his own impotence and at the dread the news inspired.
An old devil had been put down forever and the world had relaxed, had turned to its smaller concerns. But evil had not missed a stride. It was back in the lists already. It was running free, unbridled, unchallenged, and looked like it could devour the world it hated.
He was a G.o.d. On the wispiest evidences he could discern the shapes of potential tomorrows. And the tomorrows he saw were wastelands of blood and terror.
The failure of his offspring could be precursor to the greater failure of his own trust.
When his hot fury had spent itself he sent his creatures, the talking stones, into the farthest, the most hidden, the most shadowed reaches of the Plain, carrying his call for an a.s.sembly of the Peoples, the parliament of the forty-odd sentient species inhabiting that most bizarre part of the world.
Old Father Tree could not move himself, nor could he project his own power beyond certain limits, but he did have the capacity to fling out legates and janissaries in his stead.
XVII.
The old man could barely keep himself upright in the saddle when he reached Lords. His life had been sedentary. He had nothing but will and the black arts with which to sustain himself against the hazards of travel and his own physical limits.
His will and skill were substantial but neither was inexhaustible nor indefatigable.
He learned that he was just five days behind his quarry now. The White Rose and her party were in no hurry, and were having no trouble getting around the imperial authorities. For all his desperation he took two days off to rest. It was an investment of time he was sure would pay dividends down the road.
When he left Lords he did so with a horse and pack mule selected for stamina and durability, not for speed and beauty. The long far leg of the next stage would take him through the Windy Country, a land with a bad reputation. He did not want to linger there.
As he pa.s.sed through ever smaller, meaner, and more widely separated hamlets, approaching the Windy Country, he learned that he was gaining ground rapidly-if closing the gap by four days in as many weeks could be called rapid.
He entered the uninhabited land with little optimism for a quick success. There were no regular, fixed tracks through the Windy Country, which even the empire shunned as worthless. He would have to slow down and use his talent to find the trail.
Or would he? He knew where they were headed. Why worry about where they were now? Why not forget that and just head for the place where they would leave the Windy Country? If he kept pushing he might get there before they did.
He was three-quarters of the way across the desolation, into the worst badlands, a maze of barren and wildly eroded stone. He had made his camp and had fed himself and had lain back to watch the stars come out. Usually it took him only moments to fall asleep, but tonight something kept nagging at the edge of his consciousness. It took him a while to figure out what it was.
For the first time since entering the Windy Country he was not alone within that circle of awareness open to the unconscious scrutiny of his mystic sensibilities. There was a party somewhere about a mile east of him.
And something else was moving in the night, something huge and dangerous and alien that cruised the upper airs, hunting.
He extended his probing mind eastward, cautiously.
Them! The quarry! And alert, troubled, as he was. Certain something was about to happen.
He withdrew immediately, began breaking camp. He muttered all the while, cursing the aches and infirmities that were with him always. He kept probing the night for that hunting presence.
It came and went, slowly, still searching. Good. There might be time.
Night travel was more trouble here than he expected. And there was the thing above, which seemed able to spot him at times, despite his best efforts to make himself one with the land of stone. It kept his animals in a continuous state of terror. The going was painfully slow.
Dawn threatened when he topped a knife-edge ridge and spotted his quarry"s camp down the canyon on the other side. He began the descent, feeling that even his hair hurt. The animals grew more difficult by the minute.
A great shadow rolled over him, and kept on rolling. He looked up. A thing a thousand feet long was dropping toward the camp of those he sought. The still stone echoed his shouted, "Wait!"
He antic.i.p.ated the lethal p.r.i.c.kle of steel arrowheads with every step. He antic.i.p.ated the crushing, stinging embrace of windwhale tentacles. But neither dread overtook him.
A lean, dark man stepped into his path. He had eyes as hard and dark as chunks of obsidian. From somewhere nearby, behind him, another man said, "I"ll be d.a.m.ned! It"s that sorcerer Bomanz, that was supposed to have got et by the Barrowland dragon."
XVIII.
A serpent of fire slithered southward, devouring castles and cities and towns, growing larger even as pieces of it fell away. Only fire black and b.l.o.o.d.y red lay behind it.
Toadkiller Dog and the wicker man were the serpent"s deadly fangs.
Even the wicker man had physical limits. And periods of lucidity. At Roses, after the city"s punishment, in a moment of rationality, he decided that neither he nor his soldiers could survive the present pace. Indeed, losses among his followers came more often from hardship than from enemy action.
He camped below the ruined city several days, recuperating, till wholesale desertions by plunder-laden troopers informed him that his soldiers were sufficiently rested.
Five thousand men followed him in his march toward Charm.
The Tower was sealed. They recognized him in there. They did not want him inside. They named him rebel, traitor, madman, sc.u.m, and worse. They mocked him. She was absent, but her lackeys remained faithful and defiant and insufficiently afraid.
They set worms of power snaking over stone already adamantine with spells set during the Tower"s construction: writhing maggots of pastel green, pink, blue, that scurried to any point of attack to absorb the sorcerous energy applied from without. The wizards within the Tower were not as great as their attacker, but they had the advantage of being able to work from behind defenses erected by one who had been greater than he.
The wicker man spewed his fury till exhaustion overcame him. And the best of his efforts only left scars little more than stains on the face of the Tower.
They taunted and mocked him, those fools in there, but after a few days they tired of the game. Irked by his persistence, they began throwing things back at him. Things that burned.
He got back out of range.
His troops no longer believed him when he claimed that the Lady had lost her power. If she had, why were her captains so stubborn?
It must be true that she was not in the Tower. If she was not, then she might return anytime, summoned to its aid. In that instance it would not be smart to be found in the wicker man"s camp.
His army began to evaporate. Whole companies vanished. Fewer than two thousand remained when the wicker man"s sorceries finally breeched the Tower gate. They went inside without enthusiasm and found their pessimism justified. Most died in the Tower"s traps before their master could stamp in behind them.
He fared little better.
He plunged back outside, rolled on the ground to extinguish the flames gnawing his body. Stones rained from the battlements, threatened to crush him. But he escaped, and quickly enough to prevent the defection of his few hundred remaining men.
Toadkiller Dog did not partic.i.p.ate. And he did not hang around after that humiliation. Cursing every step, the wicker man followed him.
The Tower"s defenders used their sorcery to keep their laughter hanging around him for days.
The cities between Charm and the sea paid, and Opal doubly. The wicker man"s vengeance was so thorough he had to wait in the ruins six days before an incautious sea captain put in to investigate the disaster.
The wicker man"s rage fed upon his frustration. The very fates seemed to conspire to thwart his revenge. For all his frenzied and indefatigable effort he was gaining no ground-except in the realm of madness, and that he did not recognize.
In Beryl he encountered wizardry almost the equal of that he had faced at the Tower. The city"s defenders put up a ferocious fight rather than bend the knee to him.
His fury, his insanity, then, cowed even Toadkiller Dog.
XIX.
Tully sat on a log and scratched and stared in the general direction of the tree. Smeds didn"t think he was seeing anything. He was feeling sorry for himself again. Or still. "s.h.i.t," he muttered. And, "The h.e.l.l with it."
"What?"
"I said the h.e.l.l with it. I"ve had it. We"re going home."
"Listen to this. What happened to the fancy houses and fancy horses and fancy women and being set for life?"
"Screw it. We been out here all d.a.m.ned spring and half the summer and we ain"t got nowhere. I"m going to be a North Side b.u.m all my life. I just got a big head for a while and thought I could get above myself."
Smeds looked out at the tree. Timmy Locan was out there throwing sticks, a mindless exercise that never bored him. He was tempting fate today, getting closer than ever before, policing up sticks that had flown wide before and chucking them onto the pile around the tree. That was less work than gleaning the woods for deadwood. The nearby forest was stripped as clean as parkland.
Smeds thought it looked like they could set the fire any day now. In places the woodpile was fifteen feet high and you couldn"t see the tree at all.
What was Tully up to? This whining and giving up fit in with his behavior since their dip in the river, but the timing was suspect. "We"ll be ready to do the burn any day aow. Why not wait till then?"
"Screw it. It ain"t going to work and you know it. Or if you don"t you"re fooling yourself."
"You want to go home, go ahead. I"m going to stick it out and see what happens."
"I said we"re going home. All of us."
Right, Smeds thought. Tully was cranking up for a little screw your buddy. "What you want to bet you come up outvoted three to one, cousin? You want to go, go. Ain"t n.o.body going to stop you."
Tully tried a little bl.u.s.ter, coming on like he thought he was some kind of general.
"Stuff it, Tully. I ain"t no genius, but just how dumb do you think I am?"
Tully waited a little too long to say, "Huh? What do you mean?"